this train on the way to sunrise
by PallaPlease
Summary: It does not matter how dark it is outside because here, now, you are not alone.  [complete]


disclaimer: I claim no ownership over any of the characters contained within. This story is written for fun, not profit.  
notes: This story contains hints of incest (of the Klaus/Violet variety), but nothing too overt. Please be aware before you begin reading.**

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**this train on the way to sunrise**

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1

To say the Baudelaire orphans are at this moment neither in a dark place nor alone would be to tell a terrible lie, for it is true that, now in this moment, the Baudelaire orphans are very much alone in a rather dark place. This should not bother you too much: the Baudelaire orphans have been in darker places than this many times before, and so alone as to be removed entirely (it seemed) from the world that surely stood, still, somewhere outside the dark.

How horrible, you might say, and that too would be true.

Yet it is also true that in this particular moment there is nothing horrible about the Baudelaire orphans' situation, unless of course you suffer from an unreasonable fear of trains. Here it is dark, yes, but this is because outside the windows is night; and they are alone in the train-car, true, but this is because few people are in the habit of buying train tickets in the dark hours after midnight. (Few people, that is, other than Violet and her dear brother Klaus and their small, tired, teething sister Sunny.)

Imagine the surprise of the ticket teller when a slender girl with great dark smudges beneath her eyes came forward with a baby at her shoulder and a brother at her side and a pocket full of money. (This, of course, would be Violet, as Sunny is far too young to handle money and Klaus is far too much a boy to pass himself off as a slender young girl.)

If you find you cannot imagine the teller's surprise, imagine, instead, yourself as this teller.

It is sometime after midnight and perhaps you are thinking longingly of home where the sheets are tucked down and waiting, and your children are sleeping with quiet dreams playing about them; perhaps you think longingly of a nice, pleasant sandwich of ham and rye and assorted condiments.

A young girl steps forward, then, out of the shadows of the train platform. (There are two lights on at this hour: one which is directly outside the teller's booth and another beside a small bench on the platform itself.) Her eyes are dark and her skin is pale and she is carrying a small child - a large infant, really - and she is holding, tightly, the hand of a young boy not quite so old or tall as she is.

"Hello," she says, and lets go of the boy's hand. "We would like to buy three tickets for the next train, please."

Now, surely you would be surprised to see three such children - though the girl is not so much a girl anymore, and the boy is at that awkward stage of changing voices and sudden unwelcome growth spurts - out at night with not a parent between them. Asking for tickets, no less! Perhaps you would have asked these three sad-faced children where their mother was and where their father had got off to, and perhaps the girl and the boy would have told you the unpleasant story of a terrible fire and a terrible uncle; but the teller (who you are pretending to be) did not. He was tired and hungry and did not think so odd the sight of three such children out alone at night.

Instead of asking "Are you alone?" (and they are), you say, "Would that be the two-fifty, miss?"

She nods, very solemnly, and the boy beside her adjusts his glasses, just as solemn. The baby snores wetly on the girl's shoulder.

"How will you be paying, miss?" you ask.

The girl digs a hand in an unseen pocket of her skirt and comes up with a clumsy handful of change and paper clutched between her long fingers. "Three tickets, please," she says again.

"You needn't pay for children under the age of two years," you say, which perhaps is not true but nonetheless very kind of you to say.

"Oh, no," the girl says, dark eyes turning to the baby in her arms. "Sunny doesn't like not being counted."

And so you count the girl's handful of change and paper and give her the three tickets with black ink declaring arrival/departure, and watch as she tucks the tickets in her pocket and takes the hand of her brother again. Together, they walk to the other light, shadows melting together behind them.

Imagine, now, these three sad, thin, smudge-eyed orphans waiting with their heads close, beneath the one yellow light on the platform: the boy's head beside the girl's as if this is precisely where they belong, and between the curve of the baby's, backs straight as they sit on that one lonely, peeling bench.

Now they sit much the same on the train, the baby curled asleep in Violet's lap and Klaus's cheek warm on her shoulder, but for what feels much like the first time they are rattle-rattle-rattling on the tracks toward the horizon where in a few hours the sun will begin waking this quiet end of the world.

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2

When one is alone, no matter how the light the world outside, no matter how dark, one learns quickly to love those and that which one has. Violet does not have sheets turned down and waiting, and Klaus does not have quiet dreams when he sleeps, and even baby Sunny who likes very much to chew things does not have a sandwich of ham and rye and assorted condiments.

But Violet has a pocket of packaged soda crackers and another pocket with change to buy a few cheese sandwiches wrapped in cellophane; Sunny has soft dreams of her brother and her sister and the new, hopeful world they are carefully building together; Klaus has the warm soft shoulder of Violet to lean his head against when he is hurt, or tired, and the weight of her slender arm around his shoulders means far more than sheets tucked down on a bed.

They are on a train and outside it is night and they are together: Klaus has Violet and Violet has Klaus, and they both have little Sunny (who, so as to be fair, has the both of them as well).

When you are warm beside the ones you love with a pocket full of packaged soda crackers and someone dear asleep on your shoulder, it does not matter how dark it is outside because here, now, you are not alone.

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3

If Klaus does not have quiet dreams it hardly means he never dreams at all. Truth be told, the opposite holds true, as so often it does. Klaus dreams regularly, though unlike the dreams of his sister Sunny (which inevitably hold a great variety of things to chew, and so are often very pleasant dreams for Sunny) his are both devoid of things to chew and unpleasant to experience.

Klaus dreams of things he deems irrational in the clear and sharp light of day: his mother and father on a boat that sails away to where the sun is setting, as if they're rimmed with fire, and Klaus, five years old, on the end of a dock with scabs on his knees. Klaus floating on an antique high-backed chair in a dark little world he thinks is the size of a thimble, with his legs pulled up to his chest for he knows beneath the black surface of the water are leeches and tiny houses on fire and great terrible eyes floating and bobbing somewhere below.

Violet in a thin dress playing at a wedding she does not want, with her dark eyes large and sad and the pale skin beneath smudged with too much make-up and too little sleep, and her mouth saying _Klaus Klaus help me_. _Klaus_, and a ribbon wrapped around Violet's waist pulling her up into the sky like a wire made for flight, her hands around a bouquet of daisies set on fire. _Klaus_, she says. _Klaus_.

An eye beneath the water and a bride's dress made of moth-eaten silk and Klaus floating away on a chair toward sunset with Violet in the sky

"Klaus."

He opens his eyes and the world is blurry: the worn seats of the train are a smear of red and grey. Klaus fumbles for his glasses, pushing them onto his nose, and slowly sits up, blinking. Outside the windows of the train the sun is beginning to rise in little strings of pink and orange.

Violet's hand is brushing the faint brown curls of Sunny's hair from her forehead; Sunny, sleeping, chews industriously on a crumpled and unwrapped soda cracker. "Klaus," Violet says, gently, and he straightens his glasses. "Were you having a bad dream?"

"Yes," he says, and sets his head on her shoulder again.

She breathes, evenly, the curve of her arm rising and falling, and then she rests her cheek on his head, so tendrils of her dark hair brush against his face.

"Violet," he says, for now the sun is not yet up and the day is not yet started and now, with the sun just rising and Violet's cheek soft on his ear, he thinks it not too irrational.

"Yes," she says, after a moment, gentle.

"You aren't going to go away?"

"No."

"You aren't going to leave us?"

"No."

"You aren't going to leave me?"

Violet sighs a little, and lifts her head. Klaus does so as well, eyes large behind his glasses. Violet's eyes are dark and soft. She smiles, just so, in that gentle odd half-soft way Violet has at smiling for Klaus, and glances at her hand brushing Sunny's hair before she looks back to Klaus, brushing her forehead to his.

"No," she says. "I'm not going to leave you."

She pulls back and kisses his forehead, and satisfied or soothed, Klaus sets his head down again, watching the sun peeking over the horizon.

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4

Love comes from being alone, or perhaps it comes from some part of the soul that says _Will you leave me?_ and hears another part of that same soul - within, or without - saying _I will not leave you_.

When you are alone, there is nothing more important than love: the sound of another's breath; the touch of another's hand; the voice of another saying _It's all right_; the crushed and powdered bits of a small package of soda crackers you share together while outside the train taking you away from a darkness more than night, the sun is coming up.

Violet says, hoisting Sunny to her shoulder where she can chatter and chew with glee, "Isn't it lovely."

"Yes," Klaus says, "it is." And he does not think too much of the why and how of light refracting off gases and the various layers of the atmosphere, but more on how different dawn is from dusk.

"I've enough money to buy a few sandwiches," Violet says. "Would you like one?"

"Yes," Klaus says, and smiles.

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End file.
